Introducing Cinema — write, storyboard and cut a film in one workspace

Film mode was a tab inside the Video tool. It worked, and it taught us what a film actually needs that a clip does not: a place to write before you render, a way to keep the cast and the light identical from one shot to the next, and an edit — trims, sound, titles — before anyone sees it. Those three things did not fit in a composer. So Cinema is now its own workspace at /studio/cinema, with three rooms and one look panel that serves all of them.

This is the product note: what shipped, what changed for people who used Film mode, and what stays the same.

What shipped

At launch, a film was a project with three faces, in one page:

• Script — a Notion-style document where the film is written. Notes, headings, lists, to-dos, callouts, and the block that makes it a screenplay: the scene card — slugline, action and the lines said in it. Every scene card is a storyboard scene; the storyboard order is the script order; everything around the cards is notes no engine ever reads.
• Storyboard — the scenes as cards, each with its slugline, the action the engine renders, its lines, a camera move, a duration, a cast and its takes. Render one scene, or every scene that has no take yet. Drag a card and its whole section — notes included — moves with it.
• Edit — a magnetic video track, three free audio tracks, a titles track, transitions and a fade-out. Exported to one MP4 in the browser, saved to your library, published to the Community as the film.

Above them, the Look panel: one engine, one frame format, one resolution, sound on or off, a seed, continuous shots, and the director's rack — film type, era, tempo, camera gear, lens, aperture, palette, lighting — folded into every scene server-side. Set it once; the whole film is lit and framed alike.

Since 13 October, a film has two tabs, Story and Edit. The Script and Storyboard rooms became the Story: the film's notes and look on top, then scenes (a place and a time, the cast, an optional "Override film settings" look) holding numbered shots, each with its action, its lines and its takes. View it as a List or as Storyboard cards. The look, the cover, the History and Ask sit in the side panel. Notes are never sent to an engine, and the old Notion-style blocks, slash commands and continuous-shots switch are gone.

Cinema runs on every one of the 16 video engines, Motion One included. A shot costs what a clip costs on the engine you picked — 75 credits for five seconds of Seedance 2.0 Mini, 145 on Motion One — and a draft is free to keep. Failed renders refund themselves.

The three things a clip does not need

Writing first. Film mode asked for a prompt per scene. Cinema asks for a story, because a film is decided in the writing: which shots exist, in what order, who speaks. A scene carries its place and time ("INT. LIGHTHOUSE, DUSK") and its cast; each shot in it carries the action and the lines said in it. All of it rides the shot's prompt, and every speaking cast member joins the shot's references: their character sheet, and on engines that take an audio reference, their voice. You write the film and the render follows the writing, not the other way around.

Continuity. This is the one that took the longest. Between two shots, the Story sets how the second one is made: Continue the shot opens it on the last frame of the shot before (the studio grabs it from the rendered take and uploads it as the start frame), Same scene, new angle sends that frame as a reference so the engine keeps the place, the people and the light and frames it anew, and no link is a new shot. A linked shot waits for the one before it; if you re-render a shot or pick a different take, the shot after it is marked stale so you know the join moved. Add the cast (sheets ride as references on engines that read them), the shared look and one seed for the whole film, and you have the four layers of continuity Cinema stacks — written up here.

An edit. Film mode played the takes back to back. Cinema's Edit tab is the Editor's timeline: the video track mirrors the storyboard until your first hand edit, then the cut is yours — trims that ripple, crossfades, fades through black, a dip to white, titles in four styles, music and voice on free audio tracks with fades, a fade-out at the end. Pick another take of a shot and the cut follows it. The export composes every frame with the same compositor the monitor uses and encodes it in the browser, 720p or 1080p; nothing leaves your machine until you save the cut. The editor guide has the details.

What changed for Film mode users

Your drafts are Cinema projects now. A v1 storyboard opens as a v2 project with one scene block per scene, its look intact, its takes intact. An old /studio/video?mode=film link lands in Cinema, the draft as scene one. Nothing was re-rendered and nothing was charged.

At launch the Video tool kept Quick and Ads, and grew a bridge: Continue as a film on a Quick result opened a new Cinema project with that take as scene one, and scene two chained from its last frame. Today Video's tabs are Create, Replace, Effects and Editor, ads have their own Ads Studio, and shots chain in Video with Extend before Edit the sequence opens them in Cinema. This guide covers that and the starter recipes.

Limits, so nobody discovers them mid-render: 24 shots per film, 30 seconds per shot at most (your plan and the engine clamp it — 15 on Hobby, 20 on Creator, 30 from Studio up), 1 to 4 takes per render, 8 takes kept per shot, 80 clips and 120 titles on the timeline.

What stays private

Same rules as before, restated because people ask: prompts, the story, the look, the seed, the cast and the references are never shown to a viewer. A published film is its cut, its title and its cover, and it goes live on the shelf once the team has reviewed it. Drafts are yours until you publish; every take is kept in your Library with its full recipe, for you.

One consequence worth knowing: Cinema keeps every take in the library because the film is cut from them, so with the studio's private mode on it renders nothing rather than store what you asked to keep off the cloud. Switch private mode off for a film, or render single clips privately in the Video tool.

The API

Everything Cinema does, the API does: GET/POST/PATCH /v1/films hold the project, POST /v1/films/{id}/render renders shots (scenes in the data), POST /v1/films/{id}/export saves a cut, /publish publishes it. The project format is a capped JSON document (400 KB) the routes keep opaque. The films API guide is the scripted version of this note.

FAQ

Is Cinema a different price from the Video tool?

No. A shot is a clip on the engine you chose, at that engine's per-second price and your plan's length cap. Writing the story, editing and exporting cost nothing.

Can I mix engines in one film?

The look sets one engine for the whole film, which is what continuity wants. You can still drop any clip from your library into the edit — a take rendered on another engine, an upload, a still — from the media bin.

Where did "My films" go?

They are the shelf at /studio/cinema, under Your films. Every draft is there with how many of its shots are rendered, its format and when you last worked on it.

Does the export need a plugin?

No. It uses the browser's own video encoder (a recent Chrome, Edge or Safari). It counts against your storage like any library file, and it is free.

Open Cinema and start with a blank film, or ask Clap for a recipe: the story is free to write.